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Strap In For The Most Technical Explanation of The Game Genie Ever!

Retro Game Mechanics Explained is a YouTube channel that goes over some of the most highly technical explanations of retro games and systems i've ever seen. In the video i've linked above he talks about the Game Genie which I never really thought about but the explanation of how it works makes sense and it's such an elegant solution to the problem I tip my hat to the developers of it. Bit of a warning though, it's highly technical and discusses some pretty low level computer concepts such as registers and op codes.

Enjoy!

Super Meat Boy Forever Is Smashing On All The Systems In 2018!

The Super Meat Boy Forever trailer launched today with news of it's upcoming launch in 2018 on PC, Xbox One, PS4, Nintendo Switch, iOS and Android. This looks to be a good movement for the game and some aspects of it are refined somewhat such as the controls moving to two buttons.

"Two Buttons? That Sounds Dumb! Here’s the thing: shut up. Two buttons doesn’t mean less control, it means we designed levels to use two buttons. You can get a surprising amount of movement and precision by designing levels that complement your controls. Super Meat Boy felt great because there was a marriage of level design and controls, Super Meat Boy Forever is no different."

It's also made... Read All The Super Meat Boy Forever trailer launched today with news of it's upcoming launch in 2018 on PC, Xbox One, PS4, Nintendo Switch, iOS and Android. This looks to be a good movement for the game and some aspects of it are refined somewhat such as the controls moving to two buttons.

"Two Buttons? That Sounds Dumb! Here’s the thing: shut up. Two buttons doesn’t mean less control, it means we designed levels to use two buttons. You can get a surprising amount of movement and precision by designing levels that complement your controls. Super Meat Boy felt great because there was a marriage of level design and controls, Super Meat Boy Forever is no different."

It's also made of dynamically constructed levels much like Diablo III taking pre-constructed segments and moving them around to make multiple playthroughs different.

"“Procedurally generated” is an overused term that applies to a wide range of things. While the levels are randomly generated, they aren’t truly random and their creation is heavily based on criteria we’ve designed and tested. Each level consists of hundreds of carefully designed “chunks” that are placed together to create a level. Chunks are selected randomly from pools that are categorized by difficulty by us. Each time you beat a level, an increased difficulty criteria is used to generate the harder version of that level. Also, levels need to have a certain cadence to them so they don’t feel like just random stuff thrown at you. We’ve worked on a system that allows us to give a criteria of difficulty and pacing that makes the levels randomly, but still within the confines of what we want the levels to be presented as. Oh and also, it sounds way cooler than “procedurally generated”."

Looks like this Meat Boy will work out just as well on PC as it will on Phones and Consoles and if it's anything like I saw at PAX in 2014 it should be great. Tommy will be at PAX this year showing the game off so I imagine we will hear much more about how the game plays then!

http://www.supermeatboy.com/

Shovel Knight King of Cards Will Be The Last Full Story Expansion For Shovel Knight!

Yacht Club games blasted on to the Indie scene with an amazing Kickstarter for Shovel Knight. The game was funded and all of the games strech goals were met giving the base game a TON of extra content. If you've had Shovel Knight since the beginning you've see it get update after update making the game get so much bigger and adding a ton of new story content like Plague Knight and Spector Knight campaigns as well as Gender Swap mode and Co-op. Shovel Knight is set to get it's final set of story based content in Shovel Knight: King of Cards in 2018!

"Shovel Knight: King of Cards is the final campaign in the Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove saga, and it’s bigger and grander... Read All

NintendoAge Community Finds Extremely Rare Copy of Prototype SimCity on NES

"We still can't believe it's happened, but SimCity for the NES has been unearthed! Back from the depths of a closet, two protoype carts have appeared like Bowser on the loose in Tokyo, stomping, smashing, and ripping up all guesses on what their value may be!

Yesterday, a longtime NA member BIGDADDYRAMIREZ posted the above two minute video showcasing the first footage seen of this unreleased NES game since it appeared on Johnny Arcade in 1991. Where exactly did they come from? Well, turns out BIGDADDYRAMIREZ is the owner of Back in Time, a chain of game stores in the Seattle area, and like unicorns are want to do, they both walked in the other day. We just got off the... Read All

Get A Limited Pressing Of Street Fighter II On Super Nintendo

Capcom is teaming up with IAm8Bit to create a limited run of Street Fighter II to 3,500 units at $100 each. It's an honest to God Super Nintendo repo cart and it's pressed to look like the original yet, it's red. The box is a tri-fold box with foil and a glossy finish that should make any collector jealous. They are randomly going to mix in 1k Blanka Green glow in the dark carts for the lucky few that get those shipped to their house. It's an interesting way to distribute and even more limited edition version of the game and the site totally allows buying 5 to increase you chances of hitting Blanka!

... Read All

Join The Destiny 2 Open Beta August 29th-31st On PC On Battle.net!

"The Open Beta phase will begin on August 29 at 10 a.m. PT. All PC players will be able to play for FREE during this period. To play, you’ll just need the Blizzard Battle.net desktop app and a free Blizzard account—no additional sign-up or code required."

I've heard great things so far about Destiny 2 on PC and it seems it's a very amazingly created port that runs super smoothly. Curious what everyones thoughts are now that anyone with access to Battle.net can give it a try for a couple days?

https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/blizzard/20974970/play-destiny-2-free-on-pc-august-29-31-during-open-beta?utm_source=destiny-2-open-beta-activation-20170829

Secret of Mana Is Being Remade In 3D

Secret of Mana on the Super Nintendo is one of the best RPG's of all time. It was remade on the iPhone in 2012 and I thought that port was terrible in every possible way. So i'm a bit nervous to hear that Square is remaking Secret of Mana in 3D and launching it in 2018. It could be a great game. But... if the trailer is any indication, it doesn't look like it will be that good. Firstly the voice acting isn't to my liking and i'm not a big fan of the art style either. Still the game could be fun and i'm not going to rule it out entirely, i'm just not too excited about playing it. Personally, i'm more excited about getting it on the Super Nintendo Classic, but I am a... Read All

Death Road To Canada Is A Well Polished Oregon Trail+Rogue Like Beat Em Up!

jdodson gives this an astounding "Must Play" on the Ghost Scale

This achieves something special, and it would be a shame to miss it.

jdodson gives this a "Must Play" on the Ghost Scale

This achieves something special, and it would be a shame to miss it.

Back in August of 2013 I wrote about the new Kickstarter for Death Road To Canada and quickly after that I backed the Kickstarter. After that I interviewed the creator of the game and then dug in to wait for the games launch. The game finally launched in 2016 and it was added to my backlog of games to play. Since the games launch they have updated it considerably and the game seems to be even more widely praised by it's fans so I decided to jump in and give it a shot.

Death Road To Canada is a very well polished rogue like zombie bashing road trip game that pays homage to the Oregon Trail and the Ninja Turtles arcade game. Like most rogue likes you die... a lot but the... Read All

Continuing Link Between Worlds - Entering The Ruined World of Lorule

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f5/The_legend_of_zelda_a_link_between_worlds_screenshot.jpg

Back in May I started my playthrough of Link Between Worlds on the 3DS. It's a fun follow up to Link to the Past and bring enough new things to the table to be interesting. As with most new Zelda games and because I have a one year old I play it in bursts. Recently I completed a few dungeons in Lorule, which is the Dark World equivalent in Link Between Worlds. Link Between Worlds keeps the dungeon locations to the same places as Link to the Past. The Lorule dungeons are all different but keep some of the themes with the original dungeons. For instance, Lorule has a Thieves Dungeon that is similar to the Link To The Past Dungeon. Each dungeon in Link Between Worlds, so... Read All

Cheerful Ghost Radio Episode 4: Castlevania Special

Netflix dropped a new show based on the classic Castlevania series and in this episode we break it down for you to easily digest. Does Castlevania elevate the spate of terrible video game shows and movies or is it something else? The show contains some mild show spoilers so we recommend you watch it before listening. Don't worry the show is only four episodes and well worth watching!